On Thursday, September 1, 2011, BlueRock Productions LLC and Emmy® Award nominated producer Steven Fischer present Secrets of Success: The Nature of Creativity,
an interactive panel discussion exploring how a person can tap into his or her full creative potential.

What is genius? Do you have to suffer to succeed? What makes a good story? These are just some of the questions Fischer and his guests will discuss along with questions from the audience. Join us for a thought-provoking evening of inspired discussion.

Details and confirmed panelists:

Peggy Santiglia, singer/songwriter (PolyGram, United Artists) member of The Angels, noted for the 1963 pop hit, My Boyfriend’s Back.

Here are some tips from Ian Peacock’s BBC exploration on Creative Genius.

Writer P.D. James advises a person to “read widely, learn from the best without copying, and go through life with all your senses open to experience. Find out what’s creative in yourself and enjoy it!”

Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion tells us to “have courage to take your mind into directions it hasn’t gone before. Read. Travel. Listen to people on the bus. Join in life; but look at it from a [personal] angle … realize that only you are you.”

Errol Elumir has a wonderful blog on creativity. His posting of radio journalist Ira Glass speaking about how a person can reach his or her full potential is nothing short of inspirational. I wanted to share.

“What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me . . . is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. For example, you want to make TV because you LOVE TV. There is stuff that you just LOVE.

So you have really good taste. But you get into this thing where there is this gap. For the first couple years you are making stuff… but what you’re making isn’t so good. It’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, your taste is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is a disappointment to you. It’s still sorta crappy.

A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. But the thing I would say to you with all my heart: most everyone I know who does interesting, creative work, went through years of this. We knew our work didn’t have this special thing that we wanted it to have. Everybody goes through this.

If you are just starting this phase, still in this phase, getting out of this phase, you gotta know it’s totally normal and the most important, possible thing you can do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you will finish one story. You create the deadline. It’s best if you have someone waiting for the work, even if it’s somebody that doesn’t pay you. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions.

In my case, I took longer to figure out how to do this than anybody I’ve ever met. It takes awhile. It’s going to take you awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. And you just have to fight your way through that.”